Individual assessments: Make feedback your best resource
Individual assessments of performance are being used more and more as tools for growth, and routes to development and learning. Let’s face it, criticism stinks unless you know what is about and you have specific measures or recommendations to improve things.
If we are to go for excellence, if we need to continually raise the bar. The truth is that this can’t happen without feedback. One of my mentors, Peter Brinckerhoff says praise feeds the ego, criticism feeds improvement. Feedback can be used as a chance to grow and provide an opportunity for freedom raising the standard and delivery of what you do. The feedback process can be relatively helpful. So what helps?
Stand back and listen
What is your attitude? Do you leave criticism behind, discount it and just listen to the affirmation and feed the ego?
What is your approach and engagement?
Listen carefully to the feedback. What is being said? Listen to the roots do not shy away in the belief that everything is rubbish. Be careful when everyone agrees with you and says that you are perfect! Feedback as well as praise can transform our performance to an even higher standard of performance.
So how can we respond?
We need to respond in a healthy rather than an unhelpful way. A defensive stance may be unhelpful. Look at your response. Is it helpful? Does it show a willingness to learn, develop and move forward?
We can state the facts. Truth comes from understanding. So we can give the facts as we see them and listen to what is being said and the context. We can arrive at a more complete picture against the context of what we need to address, deal with or how we have performed from the viewpoint of others.
We can look at the feedback and reflect on it from the viewpoint of others. Self examination can be good. Socrates, an ancient philosopher said that the unexamined life is not worth living! This applies to personal and professional performance.
We need to know ourselves, have a clear sense of our identity, our vision and our values. We are who we are, we can aspire to be the best, but we can’t always be what others want us to be or we will find ourselves pulled in so many directions.
Feedback to be useful needs to be specific. What do we need to address? How can we address it? When can we address it? Why do we need to address it? Vague feedback is not very helpful.
It takes maturity and humility to continually enhance our performance and listen to others, even when they are saying what we don’t want to hear. However the sky is the limit and that means that our critics, those who step out and give ‘those unpalatable messages’, can be our best resources!